


A Problem Set

by onereyofstarlight



Series: FAB Five Feb [3]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24126079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onereyofstarlight/pseuds/onereyofstarlight
Summary: Alan is studying and John is no help at all. But there's more than one way to solve his problem.
Series: FAB Five Feb [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663633
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	A Problem Set

“But why?” asked Alan, staring hopelessly down at the mess of numbers and diagrams he had scrawled across his tablet as John dictated to him through the hologram.

“The negative tells you the direction,” said John impatiently. “It’s a vector, you can’t just use the number by itself, add a negative to that.”

“But there’s not a negative on the diagram,” protested Alan. “You said the diagram was right.”

“Because you’ve got an arrow there instead, you don’t need a negative.”

“But…” Alan’s words died away as he watched how John huffed and crossed his arms.

He’d been having trouble with the new two dimensional problems that were cropping up on the momentum module he was completing for his physics course and, in a flash of inspiration, had called John for some help. John had jumped at the opportunity, eager to talk physics with his youngest brother. They were both starting to regret it.

Alan shoved the tablet away.

“It’s too hard,” he complained. “I can’t do it.”

“It’s not hard,” said John, although he too looked frustrated at his inability to communicate his understanding with his brother. “Look, just try again, do this vector addition here to find the total momentum, and then you have enough information to make your final momentum triangles.”

“I’m _trying_ ,” exclaimed Alan angrily. His brother might have been speaking German for all that Alan understood him. The velocities and vector components were whirling through his brain, refusing to settle in a coherent image on the page.

John growled something about coordinate systems as he rubbed at his forehead tiredly.

“Look, why don’t you take a break,” he finally said. “Get some fresh air and let me figure out how to explain it properly.”

“Figure out how to explain it to an imbecile you mean,” muttered Alan.

John said nothing, only scowled at him, and Alan cut the connection. He left the tablet where it was and stormed off to his room for a moment of peace.

He threw himself on his bed, and glowered at the ceiling.

“Stupid John, stupid physics and stupid _schoolwork_ ,” he snarled, kicking angrily out at the blanket.

He was furious with himself for not understanding the gobbledegook that had erupted from John’s mouth the second he saw the problem, and being the reason that the spark of excitement in his eyes had slowly died had hurt more than he wanted to admit. What was more, he knew that if Scott caught wind of his troubles, there’d be hell to pay for falling behind and a grounded rescue operative in International Rescue’s future. In Alan’s eyes, that wasn’t an option.

There was a soft knock on the door he’d slammed behind him.

Alan looked over with a glare that could burn a hole through the heavy wood.

“Alan?”

“ _What_?”

“Can I come in?”

Alan glared at the door for a few moments longer before swinging himself upright. If he knew Virgil, he’d still be waiting outside at dinner time if he didn’t let him in.

“Thanks,” his brother said, giving him a slight smile as he walked into the room.

“What do you want?” grumbled Alan, shoving a pile of laundry onto the floor so Virgil could take a seat at his desk.

“Just thought I could lend an ear,” he said, holding out the tablet Alan had left downstairs. “I heard you and John earlier.”

“Oh, _great_ ,” said Alan bitterly, as he took it. “Does the whole island know I can’t do physics then?”

“You can do physics just fine,” said Virgil calmly. “You’ve just got to figure out how you make sense of it.”

“It’s not fair,” said Alan, flopping back down on his bed. “It’s so easy for him.”

Virgil shrugged. “And hand-eye coordination and snap decisions are easy for you. We’ve all got different strengths.”

“But I _need_ physics,” said Alan desperately. “I’m an astronaut, it’s kind of a big deal.”

Virgil pursed his lips at little as he eyed Alan carefully.

“You know, I found physics hard too at first.”

“What, you?” Alan looked up at his brother in confusion. “You’re an engineer.”

“Still found it hard,” said Virgil, with a lopsided grin. “Didn’t help that John was put up into the same class, racing ahead of me.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, you were only little,” said Virgil with a chuckle. “It made me so mad though, there was my kid brother offering to help me in a subject I hated because I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”

“What changed?” asked Alan. “Did you let him help you in the end?”

“Hell no,” declared Virgil with an outright laugh. “If John had been the reason I passed junior physics, I would never have done my engineering degree. No, I worked out my own way of understanding it.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s more than one way to learn physics,” said Virgil with a grin. “John lives and breathes maths and logic, he’ll never be able to explain to you what he’s thinking because he relies so much on maths to describe his understanding. He doesn’t get why people can’t just think in maths.”

Alan laughed at the image, a world where everywhere John looked, he saw equations tying it together. He had to admit, Virgil probably wasn’t far wrong.

“Well, I don’t think in maths.”

“No,” agreed Virgil. “No, you don’t.”

“Well, what about you?”

“Relationships,” said Virgil promptly. “You know ‘if we increase x, then y also increases’, that kind of thing. Plus once I could visualise examples in my head, I could make them into models and use them to solve other types of similar problems, even if I’d never seen them before. Handy for an engineer.”

“Oh,” said Alan, trying to picture the m1’s and m2’s flying around his head in a way that didn’t cause brain damage. “I’m not sure if that’s me either.”

“That’s okay, squirt,” said Virgil. “We’ll figure it out.”

Alan looked down at the tablet in his hands, his thumbs hovering over its screen. A quick tap lit up the display and he peered again at his work, trying to look past the frustration of before.

“You know, I’m happy to help,” offered Virgil. “I mean I’m not John or anything but…”

“Don’t tell him,” interrupted Alan. “But I think that might be for the best.”

Virgil cracked a smile. “Okay, lets go down to the pool table,” he said, looking eagerly over the problem set. “I think we can see this in action.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been John more often than I want to be, sorry everyone. Thank you for reading all the same!!
> 
> Written for the FAB Five Feb challenge on tumblr by @Gumnut  
> Prompts used were "hard" and "I'm trying!"  
> Cross posted from Tumblr, orginally posted on 19/02/2020


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